Merry PeckHam

Merry Peckham, cellist, maintains an active career as a performer and teacher.

As a founding member of the Cavani String Quartet (a position she held for 32 years) Peckham performed thousands of concerts in the US and abroad and was honored with a Naumburg Chamber Music Award, Musical America’s Young Artists of the Year Award, and the ASCAP-Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. She won the overall string category as well as the cello division of the National Federation of Music Clubs Competition, served as principal cellist of the Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra and for twelve years she was the cellist of the Elysian Piano Trio.

A devoted teacher and deeply committed to arts-education, Ms. Peckham has taught, given master classes and lecture demonstrations at music festivals, universities and public and private schools in communities all over the world.  Peckham is currently Chair of Chamber Music at The New England Conservatory of Music, Associate Director of the Perlman Music Program, as well as the Director of the Chamber Music Workshop @ The Perlman Music Program. She was formerly Coordinator String Chamber Music at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music as well as faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music. From 2004-2016 she hosted Offbeat, on WCLV 104.9, Cleveland’s classical music station.

Merry received her BM from Indiana University, her MM degree from the Eastman School of Music and pursued additional studies at Yale University and Ohio State University. Her teachers and mentors include Janos Starker, Aldo Parisot, Gary Hoffman, Paul Katz, Peter Salaff and Toby Perlman. Ms. Peckham has the good fortune to perform on a cello by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume (a St. Cecilia model, dated 1849.) She resides in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, drives a red Honda and plays guitar poorly but loudly.